Twitter Sells Ads

Twitter has begun to sell ads. These will appear in the streams of tweets that go back and forth between subscribers. Twitter faces the same questions that Facebook does now that the largest social network has become ad-supported. Will Twitter share user data with marketers so they can better target their messages? Privacy has moved center stage in the social network industry. Will the ads be so intrusive that users will quit Tweeting?

The ads are called “Promoted Tweets” which is a euphemism for the fact that Twitter has gone commercial.

The firm said in a recent announcement that “As we have done since the beginning of our Promoted product efforts, Twitter is taking a deliberate and thoughtful approach to this test. We’re carefully looking at how Twitter users react to and engage with Promoted Tweets in the timeline. We want to display Promoted Tweets in a way that’s both useful and authentic to the Twitter experience.” That is not saying much to Twitter users who have spent the last two years getting used to their tweets being uninterrupted by messages of any kind.

Twitter has no choice other than to implement the program because almost nothing created by a business can be free forever. Twitter has the costs of its infrastructure which includes massive numbers of servers, bandwidth, and privacy protection. It also has staff and the other expenses which normally go with a rapidly growing company.

Twitter must become a commercial enterprise to be financially self-sufficient, but in the process the company has to know that some of its subscribers will quit. The only hope that can hearten the firm’s management is that Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace have pioneered the sale of advertising on their sites. But, each set of social network users reacts differently to new features, particularly those on which “their” service make money. And there is no mistake that the people who use Facebook and Twitter believe that the services belong the them. They should set privacy rules, they believe, for themselves and their “friends” on the networks.

Twitter has entered uncharted waters, at least for Twitter.

Douglas A. McIntyre